Narrative:

Captain was called for the trip at XA45; first officer; me; called at XC45. The relief pilot called later; upon request of the captain to scheduling. All three flight crew members were called early in the morning for a supplemental flight segment to ZZZZ; uk. The captain and I arrived at scheduled show time and the relief pilot arrived at the aircraft shortly before departure. The captain and I completed all flightdeck preparation; including entering the routing into the FMS; before the relief pilot arrived. Shortly after the relief pilot's arrival I attempted to get clearance via ACARS pre departure clearance. As happens often; the pre departure clearance was not available. I asked the relief pilot to monitor the clearance as that I received from clearance delivery. He did. Delivery informed me of a full route clearance. The full route read as follows...... Cleared to ZZZZ via departure vectors ditch V312 DRIFTJ121 hto orw put taffy as filed. The filed clearance was as follows....... Ditch J225 jfk put taffy. Immediately after getting the clearance I was distracted with several pre-flight non-flight deck issues. I completely overlooked the new routing when it came time to verify the route with the pilot monitoring. The captain was not aware of the new routing as he was not listening in on the clearance (the relief pilot was). The relief pilot also missed the omission of the new clearance as a change in the FMS routing. We departed uneventfully and as we reached ditch we turned to track J225 to jfk as in the original flight plan. New york center then stated to us that they had a reroute for us to avoid military airspace and jfk traffic. We thought nothing of it since we were issued the reroute from him. After several vectors; we discussed why we were getting so many turns before being sent to our reroute fix. During this time; after about 5 turns we were cleared direct to taffy. This is when I realized that I had not changed the routing on the FMS. With this distraction; I selected LNAV; but failed to verify engagement after selection. A few minutes later ATC queried us where we were going? We realized the problem and proceeded direct to taffy. We turned from our previously assigned heading of 60 degrees to direct taffy; a heading of 44 degrees. No traffic conflicts were encountered by the deviations. The area was very quiet that morning. I believe that the event was a result of human factors causing the breaching of several barriers. First; lack of automation (no pre departure clearance) may have contributed to missing the routing change. As CRM oriented crews; we always review ACARS messages and clearances. I think had we had the ACARS message; the problem would have never occurred. Second; per SOP; I should have entered the routing page immediately after receiving it. In addition; a distraction and forgetting to verify LNAV engagement was a distraction away from SOP. Third; the external factors of the distractions of the wrong catering; missing cabin amenities; and crew scheduling problems that we were dealing with may have caused us to unintentionally deviate from our flows leading us to miss the routing change. (During the before start flow we double checked the routing complete; but overlooked the change that had not been entered). And lastly; pilot fatigue; due to the irregular operation. The crew was not expecting an early trans-atlantic 'quick call'. As we usually fly international operations at night. We were slightly out of our element preparing for an atlantic crossing in the morning. It was a bad day. This situation is a classic example of how problems are created when multiple barriers are breached. We were in the yellow for a short while; but we re-grouped and quickly re-entered the green. I can speak for myself when I say that I was not 'on top of my game' this day. I learned a great deal from this situation and I intend for it to never happening again. I feel that better prioritizing would have helped prevent this problem. I allowed the cabin crew's needs distract me from completing my duties via SOP. I will not again allow external factors such as catering; scheduling; etc. Divert me from completing my duties and flows in a complete and deliberate manner. Unfortunately; these are problems that we deal with each and every flight. Maybe the 'a' flight attendant should be tasked with taking responsibility for communicating with customer service and catering (all cabin non-flight related issues). In addition; more and more often we cannot receive pre departure clearance via ACARS here. While this is not an abnormal situation; pre departure clearance certainly provides a barrier by providing an electronic copy of any clearances.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B757 First Officer relates the events leading up to a track deviation.

Narrative: Captain was called for the trip at XA45; First Officer; me; called at XC45. The relief pilot called later; upon request of the Captain to scheduling. All three flight crew members were called early in the morning for a supplemental flight segment to ZZZZ; UK. The Captain and I arrived at scheduled show time and the relief pilot arrived at the aircraft shortly before departure. The Captain and I completed all flightdeck preparation; including entering the routing into the FMS; before the relief pilot arrived. Shortly after the relief pilot's arrival I attempted to get clearance via ACARS PDC. As happens often; the PDC was not available. I asked the relief pilot to monitor the clearance as that I received from Clearance Delivery. He did. Delivery informed me of a full route clearance. The full route read as follows...... Cleared to ZZZZ via departure vectors DITCH V312 DRIFTJ121 HTO ORW PUT TAFFY as filed. The filed clearance was as follows....... DITCH J225 JFK PUT TAFFY. Immediately after getting the clearance I was distracted with several pre-flight non-flight deck issues. I completely overlooked the new routing when it came time to verify the route with the pilot monitoring. The Captain was not aware of the new routing as he was not listening in on the clearance (the relief pilot was). The relief pilot also missed the omission of the new clearance as a change in the FMS routing. We departed uneventfully and as we reached DITCH we turned to track J225 to JFK as in the original flight plan. New York Center then stated to us that they had a reroute for us to avoid military airspace and JFK traffic. We thought nothing of it since we were issued the reroute from him. After several vectors; we discussed why we were getting so many turns before being sent to our reroute fix. During this time; after about 5 turns we were cleared direct to TAFFY. This is when I realized that I had not changed the routing on the FMS. With this distraction; I selected LNAV; but failed to verify engagement after selection. A few minutes later ATC queried us where we were going? We realized the problem and proceeded direct to TAFFY. We turned from our previously assigned heading of 60 degrees to direct TAFFY; a heading of 44 degrees. No traffic conflicts were encountered by the deviations. The area was very quiet that morning. I believe that the event was a result of human factors causing the breaching of several barriers. First; Lack of automation (no PDC) may have contributed to missing the routing change. As CRM oriented crews; we always review ACARS messages and clearances. I think had we had the ACARS message; the problem would have never occurred. Second; per SOP; I should have entered the routing page immediately after receiving it. In addition; a distraction and forgetting to verify LNAV engagement was a distraction away from SOP. Third; the external factors of the distractions of the wrong catering; missing cabin amenities; and crew scheduling problems that we were dealing with may have caused us to unintentionally deviate from our flows leading us to miss the routing change. (During the before start flow we double checked the routing complete; but overlooked the change that had not been entered). And lastly; pilot fatigue; due to the irregular operation. The crew was not expecting an early Trans-Atlantic 'quick call'. As we usually fly international operations at night. We were slightly out of our element preparing for an Atlantic crossing in the morning. It was a bad day. This situation is a classic example of how problems are created when multiple barriers are breached. We were in the yellow for a short while; but we re-grouped and quickly re-entered the green. I can speak for myself when I say that I was not 'on top of my game' this day. I learned a great deal from this situation and I intend for it to never happening again. I feel that better prioritizing would have helped prevent this problem. I allowed the cabin crew's needs distract me from completing my duties via SOP. I will not again allow external factors such as catering; scheduling; etc. divert me from completing my duties and flows in a complete and deliberate manner. Unfortunately; these are problems that we deal with each and every flight. Maybe the 'A' flight attendant should be tasked with taking responsibility for communicating with customer service and catering (all cabin non-flight related issues). In addition; more and more often we cannot receive PDC via ACARS here. While this is not an abnormal situation; PDC certainly provides a barrier by providing an electronic copy of any clearances.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.